This review contains spoilers for all seasons of “Invincible.”
Whenever I recommend “Invincible” to someone, I tell them to watch the pilot episode to the end and promise they’ll be hooked. The episode’s last scene recontextualizes the coming-of-age superhero series about the son of Earth’s mightiest former hero into a shocking, gruesome and unpredictable gore-fest that never pulls its punches. But through the violence, “Invincible” stays grounded in its characters’ simple struggles to become better people.
Season four of the animated show based on the eponymous comic book series — which finished airing on Prime Video on April 22 — stays true to this groundwork, developing compelling relationships and character arcs while building to a brutal war with a genocidal alien race called the Viltrumites.
Half-human, half-Viltrumite Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), whose alter ego is the titular Invincible, starts the season off in a difficult place. After the maniacal, sadistic Viltrumite Conquest (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) nearly killed his girlfriend, Atom Eve (Gillian Jacobs), and half-brother, Oliver (Christian Convery), in the season three finale, Mark knows that Earth will never be safe until the alien empire is extinguished.
Things change when Mark’s father, Nolan (J.K. Simmons), a Viltrumite formerly known as the superhero Omni-Man, who left Earth in disgrace after killing thousands, returns after less than a year to enlist his help. Mark begrudgingly agrees, and with Oliver — also half-Viltrumite — in tow, he joins Nolan, Allen the Alien (Seth Rogen), the bloodthirsty Battle Beast (Michael Dorn) and the bright-eyed Tech Jacket (Zoe Deutsch) to save the galaxy from the barbarous Viltrumites once and for all.
While “The Boys” — another superhero comic book brought to TV adaptation by Prime — often plays violence for laughs, in “Invincible,” you feel every blow to the face and every gob of blood spit out of a character’s mouth with unflinching intensity. In episode five, Mark finally gets his revenge on Conquest by choking him to death, leaving his face a sickening shade of purple and his eyes bloodshot — but not before Conquest can methodically and horrifyingly rip out Mark’s intestines.
The characters in “Invincible” are some of the most powerful beings in the universe, so they can take a lot. Characters rip off each other’s jaws, squeeze out eyeballs and repeatedly disembowel one another. The detailed animation and unsettling squelching sound effects in these scenes make you squirm in your chair, even knowing the characters will probably survive. From the rough orange soil of a distant planet to the desolate void of space, the locales for these battles allow visceral combat to take center stage.
Bloodlust and full-throttle combat are riveting, but the best part of season four is watching the characters grow. In particular, Nolan struggles to prove to those he loves that he has changed. In season one, he nearly beat Mark to death for refusing to pledge allegiance to Viltrum. In season two, he fathered Oliver but left Mark and his mother Debbie (Sandra Oh) to raise him. Since then, Nolan has realized how evil the Viltrumites are and has pledged to fight against them, but winning back the favor of his sons and Debbie, his ex-wife, is a much harder task.
When he returns to Earth to recruit Mark for the Viltrum War, it’s his first time back since leveling Chicago in a battle with Mark during season one. Nolan attempts to apologize to Debbie for his actions and expects her to forgive him without skipping a beat. Instead, she rebukes him for his pathetic attempt at amends after all the suffering he caused. On the next stop of his apology tour, Nolan visits his old superhero costume designer Art (Mark Hamill) and jokes about working together again after the Viltrum War ends.
Art responds, “I dress heroes, Nolan,” coldly implying he isn’t one.
Of course, it’s hard for the 1,000-year-old Nolan to overcome the cruelty and aggression he learned growing up on Viltrum. But season four shows that what’s harder for Nolan is understanding human empathy, and that he must change because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s a way back to his old life with his family. Simmons plays Nolan with the stilted tone of an emotionally naive man learning that true redemption is more than just saying “sorry.”
But Nolan’s change means nothing unless he and his allies defeat the Viltrumites. This season, we meet their leader and the most powerful Viltrumite of them all, Grand Regent Thragg (Lee Pace). We don’t see Thragg in battle until the final episodes of the season. Once we do, we wish we hadn’t.
Ruthless and cruel beyond measure, he rips apart enemies like they are paper. Even worse, not a single person lands one painful blow on him the whole season. Thragg merely hovers commandingly, easily dodging or absorbing every punch, kick and headbutt thrown his way. He even allows Mark to hit him twice, tanking the punches like it’s nothing. Perhaps the despot’s only weakness is his fanatical obsession with asserting Viltrumite superiority across the galaxy and avenging their fallen leader Argall (Frank Welker), whose cracked skull he chillingly carries with him everywhere he goes.
Season four doesn’t round out the stories of Thragg, the Viltrumites, Mark and Nolan — not even close. Series creator and showrunner Robert Kirkman has promised somewhere between seven and nine seasons. As Kirkman and his team continue to flesh out these rich characters’ stories, revealing new planets, dimensions, weapons and species, “Invincible” might begin to feel overstuffed or like a monster-of-the-week show. But as long as they keep balancing heart-pounding brutality with the resounding humanity of the show’s non-human characters, they’re on the right track.
Contact Leo Field at [email protected].